With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered sleep;
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings, in airy stream
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eyelids laid;
And, as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowered roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows, richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full voiced quire below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy ground and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew,
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give, And I with thee will choose to live.
OM. Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine, enchanting ravishment?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence.
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night—
At
fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled! I oft have heard
My mother Circe with the Sirens three,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades
Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs,
Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul,
And lap it in Elysium; Scylla wept,
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause:
Yet, they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,
And in sweet madness robbed it of itself.
But such a sacred and home-felt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
I never heard till now!-I'll speak to her,
And she shall be my queen. Hail, foreign wonder!
Whom, certain, these rough shades did never breed,
Unless the goddess that in rural shrine
Dwellest here with Pan or Sylvan, by blest song
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog
To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood!
LAD. Nay, gentle Shepherd, ill is lost that praise
That is addressed to unattending ears;
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift
How to regain my severed company,
Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo,
To give me answer from her mossy couch.
COM. What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus ? LAD. Dim darkness, and this leafy labyrinth.
COM. Could that divide you from near ushering guides?
LAD. They left me weary on a grassy turf.
Com. By falsehood, or discourtesy ? or why?
LAD. To seek i' the valley some cool friendy spring.
COм. And left your fair side all unguarded, lady?
LAD. They were but twain, and purposed quick return.
COм. Perhaps forestalling night prevented them.
LAD. How easy my misfortune is to hit!
COM. Imports their loss, beside the present need?
LAD. No less than if I should my brothers lose.
COM. Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom?
LAD. As smooth as Hebe's their unrazored lips.
COM. Two such I saw, what time the labored ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swinked hedger at his supper sat ;
I saw them, under a green mantling vine
That crawls along the side of yon small hill,
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots.
Their port was more than human, as they stood;
I took it for a fairy vision
Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colors of the rainbow live,
And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-struck;
And as I passed, I worshipped. If those you seek,
It were a journey like the path to heaven
To help you find them.
LAD. Gentle villager,
What readiest way would bring me to that place?
COM. Due West it rises from this shrubby point.
LAD. To find that out, good shepherd, I suppose,
In such a scant allowance of star-light,
Would overtask the best land-pilot's art,
Without the sure guess of well-practised feet.
COM. I know each lane, and every alley green,
Dingle or bushy dell, of this wild wood,
And every bosky bourn from side to side-
My daily walks and ancient neighborhood;
And if your stray attendants be yet lodged,
Or shroud within these limits, I shall know
Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted lark
From her thatched pallat rouse; if otherwise,
I can conduct you, lady, to a low
But loyal cottage, where you may be safe
Till further quest.
LAD. Shepherd, I take thy word,
And trust thy honest-offered courtesy,
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds
With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls
And courts of princes, where it first was named,
And yet is most pretended; in a place
Less warranted than this, or less secure,
I cannot be, that I should fear to change it.
Eye me, blest Providence, and square my
To my proportioned strength.
I BR. Unmuffle, ye faint stars! and thou, fair moon, That wont'st to love the traveller's benison,
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
And disinherit Chaos, that reigns here
In double night of darkness and of shades;
Or if your influence be quite dammed up
With black usurping mists, some gentle taper,
Though a rush candle from the wicker-hole
Of some clay habitation, visit us
With thy long-levelled rule of streaming light!
And thou shalt be our star of Arcady,
Or Tyrian cynosure.
2 BR. Or if our eyes
Be barred that happiness, might we but hear
The folded flocks penned in their wattled cotes,
Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops,
Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock
Count the night watches to his feathery dames,
'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering
In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.
But O that hapless virgin, our lost sister!
Where may she wander now, whither betake her
From the chill dew, among rude burs and thistles?
Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now;
Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm
Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears;
What if in wild amazement and affright,
Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp
Of savage hunger, or of savage heat?
I BR. Peace, brother! be not over-exquisite
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;
For grant they be so-while they rest unknown,
What need a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid?
Or if they be but false alarms of fear,
How bitter is such self-delusion!
I do not think my sister so to seek,
Or so unprincipled in virtue's book,
And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever, As that the single want of light and noise,
(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not), Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts, And put them into misbecoming plight.
Virtue could see to do what virtue would
By her own radiant light, though sun and moon
Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,
Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,.
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all-to ruffled, and sometimes impaired.
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day ;
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun ;
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